Part of my job title includes playing with some nerd toys. I'll admit when I was an apprentice I would drool over stuff like this; now it's my turn in the sandbox. This one is a phase identifier; where you can identify which phase is what anywhere on our system from near Austin to deep East Texas to West Texas.

It isn't anything new; but I sure didn't know anything about it until I found out about it. The way it works is there is a box that connects to AØ that is connect to a landline. We have many different service centers that have these dial in boxes.

Out in the field you put the GPS antenna/transmitter on your truck and to talks via RF to this toolbox looking thing which you connect your cell phone to. You dial into box at is connected to AØ and it will establish a connection.

You put this other deal on the end of your stick and hang your stick off a phase and then use then handheld device and point it towards the end of your stick and it'll register what phase your on-A,B,C via a infrared connection.

It's able to identify working with elbows and such and will also work on secondary as well.

Neat little deal...don't know what ya'll use but this is a nice little gem to have. Maps can and will be wrong...square corners, bastard corners, etc...

Currently using it on this age old rural feeder that has a parallel circuit and have found some contractors on a dip pole who used marking tape and marked everything different then what the phase indication on the pole plates say. Will also be able to verify phasing a lot easier then suffering the 3D delusional effect you get when your staring at 7 different wires.

hotwiretamer wrote:Our substation dept. has one, and we have used it a time or two.

If you recieve an "error" message, don't trust the phase reading afterwards.

We found out the hard way, and had to roll a feeder after trusting the substation guy on the phasing!

You need a good cell signal when using it, for sure.

It's a great tool besides that though!

I'm glad I posted this...when I was using it earlier it told me BØ was AØ along with "Err" and restarted it then showed me correctly. I found if it blinks the phase every other second it seems to be working smooth, otherwise on the false phase it only displayed real sporadic.